As an added bonus, the Predator 17 has hella ports: Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2, Thunderbolt 3, four USB 3.0, an SD card slot, jacks for headphones and a microphone, and a Kensington lock slot. And like most gaming laptops, this model is easy to upgrade: Two small screws and a panel stand between you and installing two more sticks of RAM. Our pick doesn’t have any open drive slots, but you can access the included hard drive and solid-state drives if you need to replace them.

$3,000 or more: This is where things get crazy. With this kind of budget you can get a high-res display, custom paint job, up to four SSDs in RAID configuration and a maximum of 64GB of RAM from manufacturers like OriginPC and Maingear. Depending on the notebook, you can get two 1080 GPUs in SLI configuration with each card sporting 8GB of VRAM. Not only can you play any game without worry of low frame rates, you can use VR headsets like the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive.
Before we dive into our list of the best cheap gaming laptops, let’s go over what to look for in a gaming laptop. After all, just because a device is affordable and has “Gaming” in its name doesn’t mean it’s going to get the job done for everyone. The main features to consider when shopping for a cheap gaming laptop are its GPU, display resolution, amount and kind of storage, and even portability are things you should keep in mind when shopping for an inexpensive gaming laptop.
The processor is the heart of a PC, and in many current gaming laptops you'll find a quad-core 7th Generation Intel Core i5 or Core i7 CPU based on the Kaby Lake chipset. Intel's new 8th-generation "Coffee Lake" CPUs launched a few months back in laptops, however, so you can expect them to become the norm going forward. Many of the Coffee Lake chips you'll see in gaming laptops include two more cores (six, instead of four), bringing more overall speed and much-improved performance on multithreaded tasks, but the upside for gaming is relatively minimal.

However, there is one important thing a lot of gamers don’t know. Buying a gaming mouse doesn’t necessarily mean that your skills will improve by a drastic measure. Sure, a gaming mouse might help you in some ways, but if you are buying it just for the sake of improving your skills, then you are wrong. In case you don’t know, most professional, e-sports gamers are actually winning all the competitions without the use of a gaming mouse, and yes, it does come as a shock, but they have actually gone on the record and stated that they prefer a standard mouse better simply because they are used to it.

But if you want to play new games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on ultra settings, you’re better off with a desktop or a gaming laptop with more powerful graphics. A $1,200 desktop is much more powerful, and you can easily upgrade it in the future. And if you opt for a higher-end gaming laptop, you’ll be able to crank up those graphics settings for years—rather than months—to come.

All the way thru our review and usage, we never noticed eve a bit dim on the ASUS FX502VM display. Bright, filled with color, alive vivid look and wide angle viewing display is a rare feature. On our light meter during benchmarking, ASUS’s notebook detected an average brightness of 289 nits, which for a laptop from this class is an awesome leap from the others of the same class.

At the moment, the most widely used display panel technology is IPS, which offers better color rendition and better viewing angles than TN display panels. Moreover, while the vast majority of displays operate at 60 Hz, there are a few displays – like the one on the Acer Helios 500 – which operate at 120 to 144 Hz. Some displays are even G-Sync compatible, making them immune to “tearing” effects.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060: Laptops with 1060 cards can play taxing games like Mass Effect: Andromeda or Witcher 3 without sacrificing some of the cooler visual eye candy, including water reflections and natural-looking hair at 1920 x 1080. You might have to tweak the settings a bit at 4K, but not too much. Even better, you can hook up your Rift or Vive headset up for a mobile plug-and-play VR experience.

In our tests, the G7’s WASD keys—the ones that control movement in most games, and the ones you touch the most—hit 103 °F (39 °C) after half an hour of Overwatch. Those temperatures felt warm and could induce sweating, but they weren’t uncomfortable to touch like the Acer Predator Helios 300’s too-toasty 110 °F (43 °C) in the same test. The Asus TUF Gaming FX504GE, which we tested with less powerful GTX 1050 Ti graphics, was the only budget gaming laptop we tested this year that kept its WASD cluster comfortably cool at 94 °F (34 °C).

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If you'd rather spend your money on Humble Bundles than hardware, then you don't actually need a hardcore gaming laptop. Along the same lines, if you're looking for a Minecraft box for the kids, you don't need to spend the money attached to the phrase "gaming laptop." A machine with a discrete graphics card, an SSD, and 8GB of RAM should take care of you.
When it comes to customization software, I'm a huge fan of Razer's Synapse 2.0 app. It lets you create profiles for all your compatible Razer hardware (mice, headsets and keyboards) in addition to turning your keyboard into one hell of a light show. And if that isn't enough you can access your creations via the cloud on any laptop. For creating a kick-ass show on your keyboard, I'm fond of both Alienware's FX software and the SteelSeries Engine, which also keeps track on your keystrokes. That comes in handy if you're trying to keep track of your kill rate or some other important input stat.
Sizing up the current state of the gaming laptop market, 8th Generation CPUs for notebooks are still the default, although we've seen at least one laptop with the Core i9-9900K. NVIDIA has launched their desktop GPU refresh with the Turing based GeForce RTX lineup, but as of yet has not done the same for their laptop chips, so Pascal based GeForce GTX still rules the roost. On the AMD side, mobile Vega was not dead, as some feared, but is currently only available in the latest MacBook Pro, and not yet in gaming laptops.
You can also get a sweet deal by going back in time and looking at laptops with previous-gen CPUs, as they are usually available at fire sale prices and there's not a huge difference in performance between Skylake and Kaby Lake for gaming. You won't be quite as future-proof, but you'll still get several years of great 1080p gaming at a low price. Let's dive into the top picks a cheap gaming laptop:

Gaming systems have higher-end components than run-of-the-mill consumer laptops, so their prices will be consequently higher, but the range across the category is huge: from under a grand to $5,000 and up. The best budget gaming laptops start at $800 and can go up to about $1,250. For that, you get a system that can play games at 1,366-by-768 resolution on high graphics quality settings, or at a full HD (1080p) resolution with the details turned down some. Storage may be a hard drive, or a modest-capacity solid-state drive (SSD).

The G7—along with the Dell G5, Dell G3, and Lenovo Y530—kept its GPU among the coolest, measuring 162 °F (72 °C) during both our Overwatch test and the more demanding Witcher 3 test. Both Asus TUF Gaming laptops kept their CPUs the coolest at around 183 °F (84 °C), but the Dell G7’s was still on the lower end of the models we tested (and within expected range) at 203 °F (95 °C). The trade-off for these cool temperatures, however, is significantly loud fans. We’ll address this topic more in the following section.
Although the lack of a dedicated graphics card will make running newer games challenging, the E5-575-33BM can run popular games such as Counter-Strike GO on medium to high settings with no problem. While many sub $500 laptops are still being offered with entry-level 1366 x 768 display panels, the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM comes with a Full-HD 1920 x 1080 display with respectable image quality. The 1000GB storage drive is sizable but low in comparison to modern solid state drives.
Play without limits thanks to this Logitech G305 wireless mouse. The ultra-fast response time delivers tiny twitches in as little as 1 ms, and the next-generation Logitech G HERO optical sensor produces competition-level accuracy. This Logitech G305 wireless mouse is extremely light at 99 g, and built-in storage lets you stow the wireless sensor safely for transport.
Mice aimed at first-person shooters, for one, tend to feature ratcheting scroll wheels—letting you cycle through your arsenal without selecting the wrong weapon—and on-the-fly resolution switchers. The latter will help you snap-change between the broad tracking you need in a frantic shootout and the tight control for lining up a sniper shot. (Sometimes this feature is dubbed something like "sniper mode," and it may involve a dedicated button for getting granular.)

At the moment, the most widely used display panel technology is IPS, which offers better color rendition and better viewing angles than TN display panels. Moreover, while the vast majority of displays operate at 60 Hz, there are a few displays – like the one on the Acer Helios 500 – which operate at 120 to 144 Hz. Some displays are even G-Sync compatible, making them immune to “tearing” effects.

The mouse, as the name suggest, does come with the RGB lighting that can be conveniently controlled through the Corsair’s customization software. The software itself is easy to use, although, it may require some learning curve, but that’s okay. You obviously get buttons to adjust the DPI to your liking, some customizable buttons, as well as a very, very handy weight tuning system that allows you remove some of the weights and put them away in order to make the mouse lighter. Now in case you are wondering, a lighter mouse means your hand will have an easier time gliding it, something a lot of FPS gamers are looking for.

These affordable gaming laptops are all either currently on special or are serious bargains in their own right, offering some ball busting deals for the budget mobile gaming connoisseur. Although we’ve tried to keep all our options under the $500, in some cases saving up a bit more can lead to a serious boost in performance, and in these cases we’ve snuck in a few good gaming laptops under $600 to keep your options open if you want the best value for your money in terms of raw performance.
The GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics processor of the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15t is available only with 3 GB of VRAM rather than the 6 GB of the other contenders. We found that its display had a screen-door effect similar to that of the Omen—the two HP laptops are likely using the same panel—and its trackpad felt a bit rattly when we tapped it. The fans made an ominous buzzing noise during everyday work, too, and the GPU reached an alarming 203 °F (95 °C) after just 30 minutes of Overwatch on high settings. For comparison, the next-hottest laptop in the same test reached just 174 °F (79 °C). We’ve exchanged our Pavilion 15t with HP, and we will update here once we’ve retested it.
German brand Roccat is well versed when it comes to crafting satisfying gaming peripherals, be it keyboards, headsets or this rather good (and not too expensive) mouse. The Kone Aimo is quite bulky and a little plasticky, but we can’t fault the comfort levels during lengthy online sessions. And if you like LEDs, Roccat hasn’t disappointed there either. You can make the Kone glow all kinds of funky hues from every crack and pore.
This Chinese manufacturer only has one product line geared towards gamers: the Ideapad Legion Y. This computer is available with either a 15.6″ or 17.3″ display (Legion Y520 and Y720). The Legion Y is in direct competition with the HP Omen and features a variety of different hardware components (entry-level models are equipped with a GeForce GTX 1050 graphics chip). Laptopmag revealed this computer’s negative aspects which mainly concern the quality of its display and the poor performance of its SSD.
The Dell G7 15 Gaming is the best gaming laptop for people on a budget. It has an excellent price-to-performance ratio, and its Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics will play games on high to medium settings for years. The G7 keeps its most-touched surfaces and innards cool enough that the laptop stays comfortable to use during extended gaming sessions, and its screen, keyboard, and trackpad are all solid. It has impressive battery life (for a gaming laptop) too. But the G7 is a bit heavier than the competition, and its fans get distractingly loud during gaming sessions, so plan to use headphones.
Apart from that, we should also note that 32 GB of RAM is indeed an overkill in a gaming laptop, unless you also plan on using some memory-hungry professional software as well. If not, MSI sells several more affordable variants of this laptop, including versions with a GTX 1060 instead of a 1070, differing amounts of RAM, and different storage solutions.
There are no longer any gaming laptops using an Intel Core i3 processor. These days, many entry-level computers come equipped with a 4-core Core i5 processor. However, the most commonly found processor in this type of laptop is the Core i7. The 4-core Core i7-7700HQ processor is slowly being phased out in favor of the Core i7-8750H (6 cores at 2.2/4.1 GHz) and the Core i9-8950HK (6 cores at 2.9/4.8 GHz).
Along with our quarterly laptop guide, near the end of every year we also like to take a look at the state of the gaming laptop market. With a much more cyclical upgrade cycle, gaming laptops tend to evolve in lockstep with the major components inside them. For the gaming laptop market, this includes not only more powerful CPUs, but also more unique (for a laptop) components like discrete video cards, mechanical keyboards, and perhaps an IPS panel or high-refresh TN display. All of which come together to make a breed of laptop that is very different from the kinds of machines that define the mainstream and professional markets.
Although priced higher than our under $500 recommendations, the NVIDIA Geforce MX150 and 940MX dedicated graphics cards found in the best $600 gaming laptops on the market deliver up to 4 x better performance over the integrated graphics found on most cheaper laptops in this guide. If you plan on playing newer games we strongly recommend you invest in a laptop with a dedicated graphics card. See our sub-$1000 priced gaming laptop guide for more options.
Looking for something more bleeding edge? A new version of the Razer Blade just came out. It features an 8th gen Intel Core i7 processor, and starts at $1,900. In its review of the 2018 Razer Blade, CNET gave the machine an 8.6 overall, bemoaning its high price but saying this rig "moves the bar on slim gaming laptops, with better hardware and a bigger screen."
More important to look for is a suitable resolution range, measured in dots per inch (dpi), that allows for fine-grained (low dpi) and wide-sweep (high dpi) tracking. Just as crucial is a button or toggle that lets you adjust the setting easily on the fly—as opposed to only in software. Mouse resolution is mostly a marketing numbers game; you would use extreme dpi settings in the five-figure range only if you have one or more very high-pixel-count displays, such as 4K monitors, to mouse across. So don't put a whole lot of stock, say, in a 10,000dpi maximum setting versus a 12,000dpi one. Either will serve you well under most real-world circumstances.
Gaming Laptops (Show All) MSI Gaming Laptops ASUS Gaming Laptops Gigabyte Gaming Laptops Alienware Gaming Laptops GTX 1050 Gaming Laptops GTX 1050 Ti Gaming Laptops GTX 1060 Gaming Laptops GTX 1070 Gaming Laptops GTX 1080 Gaming Laptops Alienware 17 Laptops DELL G5 Gaming Laptops DELL G3 Gaming Laptops Gigabyte Aero 15 Laptops AORUS X-Series Laptops Gigabyte Sabre Laptops
The HyperX Pulsefire FPS Pro has everything an enterprising first-person shooter gamer needs. A coarse, textured grip will keep your hand right where it needs to be, while a smart button layout will put a few extra commands at your fingertips. Even the software is fairly easy to use, letting you customize attractive lighting patterns or adjust the high-quality sensor's DPI range. Compared to similar gaming mice, the Pulsefire FPS Pro doesn't cost much, either, making it the best FPS gaming mouse for those who are just getting into the multiplayer scene.

We’ll be starting the list off with a budget-friendly solution, the Acer Aspire E15. This simple, unassuming laptop may not be the ultimate gaming machine, but it does a number of things right, making it a viable choice for gaming. But most importantly, it is the cheapest laptop on this list, so if you’re looking for an affordable way to play your favorite games away from home, then this might just be the best choice.

As we noted earlier, 15.6 inches is the general size rule for most under-$1,000 gaming laptops. This size is a good compromise in ways that extend beyond cost. Sometimes, gaming on the biggest laptop screen possible—and with a few exotic exceptions, that's the 17-inch class—is the way to go. But if you've ever tried carrying one of these machines, or shopped for a laptop bag that can fit both it and its gigantic power adapter, you may have second thoughts. Most of these notebooks weigh eight pounds or more.
Many PC gamers rely on a high-tech gaming mouse for fast, precise aim in FPS and other games. These mice can also allow for more comfort than PC gaming controllers during extended game sessions, with less cramping in the hand and fingers, especially when paired with complementary gaming keyboards. And since a gamer mouse is, of course, a mouse, it can also perform double duty for everyday computing.
Such high product churn means there isn’t really a best time of the year to buy a gaming laptop, but here are some things that might be worth looking forward to: Intel’s first eighth-generation Core processor and quad-core ultrabook chips, Nvidia’s Max-Q approach to designing thinner and quieter laptops, MSI’s new gaming laptops, Lenovo’s Legion Y920 laptop, Acer’s Predator Triton 700 laptop, and Samsung’s Notebook Odyssey laptop.

This is a Black Friday deal that has gone live early. Take $50 off what I would already consider the best value in VR gaming. You get 7 apps (Robo Recall, Lucky's Tale, Dragon Front, Quill, Medium, Dead & Buried, and Toybox.), but my favorite Rift game by far is Beat Saber. Beat Saber is a mashup of Fruit Ninja and Rock Band, and I highly suggest you give it a try.

With a comfortable shape, textured grips and 11 big, programmable buttons in a convenient layout, the Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum (an updated version of the excellent G502 Proteus Core) has a great feel and stellar performance, and is the best overall gaming mouse on the market today. The device isn't specialized for any one genre, but it handles FPS, RTS, MMO or anything in between with grace and aplomb. Users can adjust the Proteus Spectrum's weight and set its scroll wheel to feel either resistant or almost frictionless. The Logitech Gaming Software can even scan your computer for games, automatically create profiles to fit them and customize the mouse's illumination with full RGB backlighting.

Alienware: Known for its distinctive spaceship design complete with out-of-this world lighting, Alienware does a solid job of offering value while still delivering high-end specs. However, outside of its predetermined configurations, there isn't much room for customization. The company typically offers a 1-year warranty with on-site service after remote diagnosis.

However, I found that that the Rival 500's generous controls may also contribute to its biggest problem: a lack of weight. As with other mice with 10+ buttons, there's just not much heft to the body of the mouse itself. With no option to add more weights, the mouse feels feather-light, and not in a good way. This isn't a huge issue, especially if you like lightweight mice, but it's the cost of essentially having a keyboard in your right hand.
There are not all that many graphics chips to choose from (Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, 1050 Ti, 1060, 1070 or 1080…). Your selection will depend on your particular needs and budget. A GTX 1070 or 1080 would probably be overkill for gamers interested in playing MMORPG games such as World Of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 and would only prove useful when connecting to an external 4K display. Facing off against the GTX 1050 and 1060 can be found a few computers employing a Radeon RX 560, 570 or 580 graphics chip – but not all that many.

A gaming laptop is constrained by its graphics processor; that’s the component that has the biggest impact on gaming performance, and you can’t upgrade it. Many cheap gaming laptops also lack either a solid-state drive or a roomy hard drive for storage, so you may have to pay extra to upgrade that later. You’ll need to put more money into keeping a budget laptop relevant in the long run—through storage and memory upgrades—than you would for a high-end gaming laptop that already has a solid-state drive and at least 16 GB of RAM (not to mention better graphics). A cheap gaming laptop is a temporary fix for a couple of years if you can’t invest in a desktop or a more expensive laptop (or if you need something that’s moderately portable).

Given that high-end components tend to drain battery life, don't plan on taking any of these gaming rigs too far from a wall socket very often. Cutting-edge ports like USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 are beneficial now, and will only be more so down the road, but look for at least two USB 3.0 ports so you can plug in an external mouse and a hard drive for your saved media files. If you mean to attach a VR headset to your GeForce GTX 1060-or-better rig, look for the right loadout of ports to accommodate it; you'll need a well-placed video out and enough USB ports for the hydra-head of cabling. Other video ports, like HDMI or Mini DisplayPort, will be helpful if you want to play games on an external display, but aren't absolutely necessary if your laptop's screen is large enough.
Some manufacturers have opted for an intermediate and less expensive solution; that is to say, a hybrid hard drive (SSHD) which incorporates a very small SSD (8 GB) in order to optimize the storage system’s performance. However, the performance of this type of drive remains slightly inferior to that of a fully fledged SSD. Intel’s Optane technology is used on some of these hybrid systems, and it works quite well…
Mice aimed at first-person shooters, for one, tend to feature ratcheting scroll wheels—letting you cycle through your arsenal without selecting the wrong weapon—and on-the-fly resolution switchers. The latter will help you snap-change between the broad tracking you need in a frantic shootout and the tight control for lining up a sniper shot. (Sometimes this feature is dubbed something like "sniper mode," and it may involve a dedicated button for getting granular.)
Prolonged exposure to warm laptops can cause erythema ab igne (EAI)—also called Toasted Skin Syndrome or Granny’s Tartan—a blotchy, chronic skin condition that is in rare cases associated with some cancers. We do not recommend using any gaming laptop on your lap for long periods of time, as the undersides of all the laptops we tested regularly measured over 43 °C (109 °F) (the threshold for EAI) during even short gaming sessions.
With a sleek, ergonomic design, three convenient thumb buttons and gorgeous RGB options, the SteelSeries Rival 600 provides everything you need to excel at an RTS or MOBA, and nothing you don't. You can use the mouse as-is out of the box, or tweak the options with the robust SteelSeries Engine software. The Rival 600 earns its accolades as our best RTS/MOBA mouse.
Gaming laptops can put a serious dent in your wallet, with some of the fancier models costing upward of $3,000. But who says that the right rig has to cost an arm, a leg and the soul of your firstborn? Fortunately for the fiscally conscious gamer, there are some sub-$1,000 notebooks that can run graphically taxing games like Destiny 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider at solid frame rates.